KÀ

Three years ago I reviewed the soundtrack to Cirque du Soleil's KÀ. Last week in Vegas, celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary and my birthday, I finally got to put the visuals to the score. Vegas is overrun with Cirque du Soleil productions. Nearly every destination hotel casino on the Strip has one, and KÀ is the MGM Grand's offering.

My wife got us second row seats for the amazing production. The stage in and of itself was simply stunning. It could tilt from a horizontal to vertical position and rotate completely. The choreography of the show was breathtaking. A fight was set on the stage while it was in its vertical position -- with the performers using only pegs protruding from and retracting back into the stage to scale and descend the platform. There was a wire-fu bullet-time battle that also took place on the vertical stage. At one heart stopping point there was a rotating contraption where performers were defying gravity without harnesses or nets! The show also simulated a ship caught in a hurricane and a bird in flight, and both scenes took the performers out over the audience.

I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before, and I was totally blown away. It is my understanding that KÀ was the first (and may still be the only) Cirque du Soleil production to employ a narrative device to move the show along. I don't know that it was necessary, but it certainly didn't detract from the wonder and jaw dropping astonishment we felt for the individual feats. Fantastic show! And the soundtrack is now loaded back on the iPod!